The screenplay, penned by Lawrence, centers on Ray Michaels (Grant) who in 1998 was on top of the world — a witty, sexy, Englishman in Hollywood who had just won an Academy Award for best screenplay. Fifteen years later, he’s creatively washed up, divorced and broke. With no other options, he takes a job teaching screenwriting at a small college on the East Coast. Although the idea of teaching is less than thrilling, he hopes to make some easy money and enjoy the favors of impressionable young co-eds. What he doesn’t expect to find is romance with a single mom who has gone back to school.

Grant often plays adorkable, hapless characters with memorable quips. This role also sounds like his character in Music and Lyrics (2007), another Marc Lawrence collaboration in which he played a washed up musician who used to be popular in the 1980s and is struggling to make another hit. Grant, Lawrence, and Castle Rock also collaborated on the romantic comedies Two Weeks Notice (2002), and most recently, Did You Hear About the Morgans? (2009), according to the The Hollywood Reporter.

To get your Hugh Grant fix, you can go see him play several different villains in Cloud Atlas, in theaters Oct. 26.

This clip of the British star in Love Actually (2003) summed up our reaction to the news of his new flick: